Re: [OS:N:] Another multiple response (Basic rights warmed up in the microwave again)

On Sat, 16 Aug 2003, James Michael DuPont wrote:
> --- Johnnie Peters <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 
> > You have the right to tell people how you want to be educated.  They
> > also have the right to tell you how then will educate use.  After
> > graduating high school you have the right to tell them that you will
> > go
> > somewhere else if you do not agree with them.  They also have to
> > right
> > to say  Bye-Bye and off you go.

> What about public education? Tax supported courses? Does a high school
> student have the right to refuse to use microsoft word format?

now this concerns me, as someone who helps an inner city school where the
students are lucky if they have a 486 that they can borrow and few if any
even have close to state of the art.  Many students can only access the
internet via a public library, how can we ask or demand that these
students use a product that costs $$$ not to mention getting computers
into the class room and payiing for costly software when keeping the
teachers paychecks from bouncing is major concern each week.

and while we graduate students from highschool that are as smart as any
others they have not been exposed to the latest and greatest, maybe this
makes them more "educated" because they are more flexible, but if they try
to get into many colleges they are immediately confronted with proprietary
stuff that they are forced to use that they have never seen, nor can they 
afford, we have had very intelligent youung people have to withdrawl from 
colleges where they had scholarships because they couldn't afford the
proprietary technology those schools required for courses like freshman
english,  what does having to turn in papers on Word have to do with
knowing the English language????  why couldn't or wouldn't proffesors
accept documents in Open Office????  

now this is a sore spot for me and one of the reasons I'm active in the
Open Source movement


Bob.  

 


"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve Neither liberty nor safety",    Benjamin Franklin
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